■引用

"Ecology as cosmological analysis" Philippe Descola pp.22-35
The Land Within ――Indigenous Territory and The Perception of Environment
Alexandre Surrall?s, Pedro Garc?a Hierro (eds,)
International work group for Indigenous Affaires 2005

The Achuar of the Ecuadorian rain forest, for instance, maintain that many plants and animals possess a 'soul' identical to the one with which humans are endowed. Such a faculty entitles them to be included into the category of 'persons' a, as it grants them reflexive consciousness and intentionality, renders them capable of emotions and allows them to exchange massage with their consciousness as well as with members of the other species human include. This extra-linguistic communication is deemed possible because of the ability of the soul to convey thoughts and desires directly to any person endowed with a similar faculty, without the mediation of sound thus modifying the sate of mind and the behavior of the addressee, often without him or her realizing it,22

For the Achuar view the forest, with its bewildering diversity of plant, as a sort of possessing spirit, This segment of the world which evolves and develops independently from human norms, and that we usually call nature, is not for the Achuar a mere object to be socialized, but the ubiquitous subject of multiplicity of social relations. 24
In modern thought, moreover, nature only acquires a meaning by opposition to the results of human ingenuity, be they defined as culture, society history art oecoumene or anthropic landscape. But a cosmology where the majority of plants and animals are included in a community of persons sharing most oh the faculties, behaviors and moral codes ordinarily granted to humans hardly meet the criteria of such an opposition, 24

As a consequence, the taxonomic grip over reality remains relative and contextual, as a permanent swapping of appearance does not allow one to attribute stable identities to the living components of the environment. 25

Similar cosmologies are extremely common among native inhabitants of the south American Lowlands. In spite of Their internal difference, all have as a common characteristic that they do not operate clear-cut ontological distinctions between humans, on the other hand, and a goo many species of animals and plant, on the other. Whether visible or invisible whether anthropomoriphic or theriomorphic, mots entities present in the world are linked together in a vast continuum articulated by a single regime of cultural prescriptions and sociability. …they derive entirely from relative positions that each class of being occupies in relation to the others, according to the peculiarities of its metabolism, particularly of its diet. Each category of entity pres on others in an all-encompassing food-chain so that individual and collective identities are construed through day to day cannibalistic interactions. …Humans, whether alive or dead plants animals or sprits have a relational identity subject to constant ceive the other kinds according to its criteria and needs. 25

These social properties are drawn from the repertoire of each culture, which will thus tend to characterize its relationship with such or such component of its environment according to the locally dominant forms of sociability : be they attitude of derived from kinship positions, the authority of a chief or of an elder brother, ritual friend ship, the code of conduct in trade and barter, codified hostility, etc. The result is not a grid of classifying natural kinds but a template for categorizing the types of relations that humans maintain with non humans.…I do not mean to imply that animic system or totemic systems exist in a pure from, perfectly realized in single societies.

Many Amazonian cosmologies are decidedly animic in the way they predicate ontological distinctions, although they may use totemic indexes to define particular sets of relations. 31

However, such knowledge and expertise cannot be couched easily in the Procrustean bed of modern environmentalist discourse which presents nature as a common capital to be preserved and wisely managed. In fact, for peoples who treat plants and animals as social persons and not as components of an abstract and separate natural domain, there is no more sense in the idea that these non human entities should be protected and @reserved than there would be in the idea that their distant enemies should be protected and preserved for the sake of the future welfare of humanity. 32

The Indian leaders may willingly play the part of "wardens of the Jungle" that is expected from them, they may voice forcefully the New Age slogans on Mother Earth and the sacred nurturing forest which they have quickly learned to mimic, but what they mainly expect from these alliances with environmentalist NGOs is a recognition of secure rights to their land, that is, the insurance that they will be able to support themselves within the confine of a territory protected from encroachment by outsiders and preserved from major ecological damages endangering, not the forest as a natural asset, but the mode of subsistence they derive from it. 32
An abstract concern for the maintenance of biodiversity, for the preservation of a fragile ecological equilibrium, or for the ultimate fate of the so-called green lung of the planet is entirely foreign to traditional Amerindian discourse on their environment and it appears only in those contexts where it may help to foster legitimate claims for land rights. 33